This invention relates generally to the field of providing quality education. More particularly, the present invention provides means for optimizing the effectiveness of an educational institution by measuring student needs, by ascertaining resource requirements of the educational institution prospectively, and by measuring the effectiveness of the programs initiated by the educational institution.
The phrase “educational institution” typically engenders images of a physical place, perhaps with a tree-lined campus, student dormitories, and a faculty member lecturing before a classroom of students. The Internet has spawned another kind of educational institution, one with a virtual classroom in which students interact with a teacher via a computer. While brick and mortar facilities have not been replaced, the Internet has brought the content of the classroom to the home and office.
All educational institutions strive to meet each student's particular needs, to provide the resources needed to meet the institutions commitment to the students, and to measure the effectiveness of the institution in accomplishing its goals. The measures used by brick and mortar facilities and current distance learning institutions are the same. Attendance, homework, test scores, and exams and similar measures are used to evaluate students. The resources of an educational institution are allocated based on the intended course of study indicated by students in their applications and at registration. Such institutions measure their own performance based on drop-out and graduation ratios.
These measures suffer because they are determined after the fact. By the time it is known that a student has lost interest in classwork, it may be too late to counsel him or her. Allocating resources solely based on applications or registrations places the institution at risk of misallocating those resources should students change their academic plans. Drop-out ratios and graduation ratios do not permit an institution to detect and correct problems on a timely basis.
The Internet has also changed the way the physical educational institution interacts with students. For example, course registration servers are used by colleges and universities to interact with students. Typically, an enrolling student visits a Web site where that student enters his or her name, selects courses from descriptions displayed on the site, and is advised as to the availability of the course session and the times that it is provided. Network-based course registration provides a student a means to manage class requirements and schedules. From the perspective of the educational institution, network-based course registration is a management tool that automates the registration process and allows limited means for institutions to track course participation by category, subcategory, location, and/or course number.
In a network-based distance-learning environment (herein, a “virtual university”), a student is not only expected to register for classes electronically, but to receive course material, take tests, and obtain guidance via an electronic classroom formed by networking students and an instructor. However, unless the student is asking for assistance or an observant teacher notes problems in the student's class work, the electronic classroom setting alone does little to measure a student's performance during the student's involvement with the virtual university. Further, the electronic classroom provides little in the way of guidance as to the prospective resources needed by the virtual university to satisfy its commitments to its students.
What would be desirable are means for establishing a relationship between an educational institution and a student wherein the student's progress is monitored from registration through and beyond graduation. Monitoring means would allow the student's progress to be measured and the student's need for support and attention to be determined. Means would also be provided to permit administrators of the educational institution to measure the effectiveness of virtual university programs and to determine prospectively the resources needed to meet student commitments.